Face value.
Someone wrote…
I hate the idea of “coming out.” Why can’t the world take me at face value? I shouldn’t have to explain it!
What’s your experience?
Posted by julian on December 20th, 2010 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice 20 comments »
December 20th, 2010 at 8:56 am |
I completely agree. Why should it make a difference? It’s not like if I’m one way or another, I’m a completely different person.
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AJ replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Hey. My name’s Avery too, but I go by AJ. Pretty gnarly, especially because the name isn’t that common.
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December 20th, 2010 at 9:20 am |
100% agree. The whole concept of coming out implies that I’m admitting something I was trying to hide. Just because you don’t know who I am doesn’t mean I was hiding anything, and whether or not it’s something you’re comfortable with doesn’t mean I have anything to be ashamed of. People often “come out” like a kid getting caught in the cookie jar. You know what? Those are my damn cookies and I’ll eat as many as I want!
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sam replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 10:52 am
wonderful!
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Samson replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
BRAVO. FREAKING BRA-VO.
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December 20th, 2010 at 9:21 am |
However a person of conventional conduct proceed,
If they are not complied with,
Out go their fists to enforce compliance.
Here is what happens:
Losing the way of life,
people first rely on their fitness;
Losing fitness, they turn to kindness;
Losing kindness, they turn to justness,
Losing justness, they turn to convention.
Conventions are loyalty and honesty gone to waste;
They are the entrance of disorder.
Lao Tzu was a plenty smart person. People operate the way they do because it’s easier. Remember that half of all people have an IQ under 100. Many people are just not able to think their way around conventional code of behavior and many more are afraid to try.
Most people were punished from infancy for questioning authority or acting differently. It is really, really hard to get out from under that load of societal baggage.
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Vicky replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Thanks for the Lao Tzu! He’s easily one of my favorite eastern poets/philosophers.
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December 20th, 2010 at 10:46 am |
Yes, but if you’re different from the most common, you’ll have to explain unless you want to get a lot of misinterpretation.
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Elijah replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Yeah, in an ideal world you wouldn’t have to explain, and people would understand gender identities/sexualities outside the binary. But this is not the perfect world for gender/sexuality nonconformists and coming out and telling people how you identify is actually a pretty good way to be understood.
For instance, today I just came out (as a trans boy) to one of my friends. We’d had conversations about crossplay where I talked about binders, I talked about wearing boys’ briefs, I spoke about being a trans guy, basically. But if I hadn’t actually come out and TOLD HER that I was male, she wouldn’t have known that I identify as male and prefer male pronouns.
Plus, face value isn’t always the best way to go about with things. At face value pre-transition trans people are their birth sex, basically. At face value I probably look androgynous/genderqueer, but my gender identity is completely male. At face value masculine women look like lesbians, feminine men like gay men.
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Jessica replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
I eel sometime like the 3D construct in Flatland. For many cispeople gender just is, there’s left and there’s right, forward and back, but no, not ever, up or down.
Imagine trying to explain how it was hard for you to learn to swim — to a dolphin. It’s not that they are hostile to the notion of understanding, it’s just that what you’re trying to explain doesn’t have any hooks to attach to in their understanding of the universe.
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Vicky replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I identify well with what you’re going through, Elijah, because while I am heterosexual and more or less cis I often find myself under similar scrutiny. Many people look at the dresses and skirts and assume that I am gay, or worse that I am a sexual deviant and must be treated with disdain. They do not bother to ask about my personal preference for pronouns, or what my presentation is about, or whether or not my transvestitism is sexual in nature (like most transvestites, for me it is not). As such, I sometimes have to “come out” as a straight man who enjoys wearing women’s clothing and occasionally would like to be addressed by a woman’s name and pronouns, despite the fact that I don’t particularly care for passing as a woman (I love my beard too much for that). So I agree that in the ideal world there would be no such thing as coming out. However, in this world I am bombarded by reasons it is sometimes necessary. The world cannot take us at face value because the world is set in its ways and cannot change quickly enough for our comfort.
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December 20th, 2010 at 2:49 pm |
A thousand times agreed.
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December 20th, 2010 at 6:57 pm |
I’m not against explaining things to people, I’m against the formalized process of “coming out”. And by being against it, I mean it’s not for me, just like lots of other social rituals that I don’t feel express who I am. I’m especially against the idea of people feeling obligated to come out. If I’m asked I don’t lie, though I may tell a person it’s none of their business, and if it’s relevent to the conversation I’ll even volunteer information. Coming out makes a big deal of something that shouldn’t be a big deal, even though society THINKS it’s a big deal. I have brown hair, I’m 32, I’m bisexual, my favorite soda is Mountain Dew, I like cats, and my gender identity is androgynous. That’s how it should be. Not how it is, maybe not how it’ll be anytime soon, but how it should be.
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Jessica replied:
December 20th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
I am not a big fan of coming out either. To me it’s just another binary:
a) before transitioning, I was this, and
b) after transitioning, I was that.
Binaries are human constructs, they’re not real. Transitioning is not, nor should it be mistaken for a right of passage or a destination. We learn, we grow, we change, we experience, we experiment, we decide and then we do it all again tomorrow.
I don’t want any label defining me. For me that is the heart and soul of being trans. I am so many other things in addition to being trans. And I’m nowhere near done. Or so I hope.
I am really lucky to live at a time and place where I can be more or less myself without fearing for my life.
Many people don’t have that luxury. For them, they come to a time and place in their life when they have to choose either to be trans or choose to be a ghost (someone who continues along on the rails of conventional life in apathy until released by death). These people often must make that break – and making it, they have to believe they have made a real and honest and essential choice. For them, coming out is a decision gate that moves them from an old life where happiness was spent to a new life, where at least happiness is possible.
We have lots of straitjackets we put people in: gender, sexuality, religion, success, acclaim… people who jump ship from any of these say a lot of the same kinds of things – they’re immigrants in a new and undiscovered country and they believe firmly in that new land, just as those they left behind consider them to have been fools.
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December 22nd, 2010 at 2:54 am |
Why wouldn’t they, indeed? I never bother coming out IF people get my pronouns right the first time. However, if they read me as the girl that I’m not, I will explain to them why how they perceive me isn’t the truth.
See, when people take me at face value, they usually don’t see the real me. My face isn’t me. Hence coming out is my way of showing them my real face.
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December 22nd, 2010 at 11:28 pm |
I gave up with coming out around the time I stopped flinching if someone used the wrong pronouns or my birth name…after that I just thought- if they really want to know they can ask me directly, other than that I will just be me and allow them any assumptions that make them rest easier. If people want to think I am a girl, with hidden depths of girliness that I never show, then I let them- it doesn’t upset me anymore to do that, and if they really wanted to get to know me then they’d have to drop those assumptions anyway and start asking questions. You’d be amazed at how many people just accept things I say without asking direct questions.
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Jessica replied:
December 23rd, 2010 at 7:45 am
That is so true. It is amazing how people will just take what you say at face value without questioning it. And that’s not just the Fox News crowd neither.
I wonder why they can’t think of you as someone who had hidden depths of manliness you’re trying to get in touch with. It gets me when peoples’ eyes never get above your neck. I wonder why there is a pervasive assumption that they get to define you, and not you who should get to define you.
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December 23rd, 2010 at 12:44 pm |
Coming out should be about stating what’s different about you, not explaining that it’s not your fault or, even worse, that you’re sorry for being what you are. You don’t have the obligation to tell anybody anything, while doing as you please.
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Vicky replied:
December 23rd, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Absolutely! I make a point of NEVER being apologetic when I talk about my identity, unless the person is being a complete jackass and I apologize sarcastically for not taking his/her/hir feelings into account when I put on the clothes I best feel like myself in that morning.
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Vicky replied:
December 23rd, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Apologies for the awkward syntax.
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